


Painrial

by Wyndle (mollymauks)



Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: (I also have chronic pain so this is ownvoices), (TECHNICALLY IT /IS/), Canon Compliant, Chronic Pain, F/F, I rated it M bc nothing happens but also they're DRIPPING in sexual tension so like??, Missing Scene, Navani has chronic pain and I'll fight about that, Rhythm of War Spoilers, UST, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Who'd have thunk it?, in my head and heart this happened and there's nothing anyone can do about it, the MILFs deserved the best okay?, the best kind, turns out Fused have a great many uses for their ancient powers that i can make extremely gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:07:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27964289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollymauks/pseuds/Wyndle
Summary: Set mid Rhythm of War so there are SPOILERS.MANY SPOILERS.*SPOILERS FOR RHYTHM OF WAR*DID Y'ALL GET THAT!?Navani's POV, set during one of their many scholarly research sessions. Raboniel is an ancient Fused, but she doesn't have an ancient body to match, so she's fine studying on the cold hard floor. Navani's body is less happy about this. Raboniel discovers some novel uses for her abilities to help. They're all extremely gay.
Relationships: Navani Kholin/Raboniel
Comments: 23
Kudos: 55





	Painrial

**Author's Note:**

> THERE'D BE SPOILERS IN THIS HERE FIC. 
> 
> It's been a long-standing headcanon of mine that Navani has some kind of chronic pain condition. (She engineered and never takes off a fabrial specifically designed to deal with pain. Like. HELLO!?) This was an interesting way of playing with it. 
> 
> Also I wasn't 100% sure if Raboniel had the surge of Division or Transformation, so I stayed vague.

Navani groaned softly, shifting in place on the hard floor.

With Raboniel working beside her today, the desk had proved too confining for all of the papers, experiments, and reference books they were working with. So, at Raboniel’s suggestion, they had relocated to the floor, spreading their research around them.

It did make it easier to organise and group information, spot patterns and connections, she had to admit. But it caused other problems.

Navani had thought, and secretly hoped, Raboniel would be too important to sprawl on the floor with a human. She had strange ideas of propriety.

She reminded her of Jasnah, in some ways. Though she personally didn’t seem to care much for her society’s expectations in terms of lauding her own importance, there were things she absolutely expected to give the proper presentation and respect. Appropriate use of her title, for instance.

Evidently, sitting hunched on the floor scribbling on scrap paper was not among the things that were a slight to the Fused’s honour.

Navani had, therefore, had no choice but to join her.

She had been in a queen, in one way or another, for most of her adult life. She didn’t consider herself above sitting on the floor either, as it happened, especially not in the name of science.

Being the dowager queen for some years had accustomed people to her ‘eccentricities’ which were, in fact, perfectly ordinary human things. Just things they felt one of her station should not being engaged in. That was ebbing again, in her role as Queen of Urithiru.

Indeed, Dalinar had almost had a heart attack when he’d caught her studying on the floor once. Bless him. You’d have thought he’d walked in on her giving on the Heralds a massage with her unclothed safehand.

No, decorum was not the problem. She was simply having a bad day. Her sense of propriety did not object to any of this, but her hips certainly did. And they’d recently invited her shoulders to join in the angry demonstration. How lovely.

She hissed irritably and stretched her legs out in front of her to see if that would help. It did. For precisely a minute. Then it didn’t.

Storms but she missed her painrial.

Raboniel’s eyes flicked towards Navani and she hummed a rhythm Navani couldn’t place, but didn’t say anything.

Conscious of the Fused’s attention, she tried not to show her weakness, to focus on her work instead.

Impossible.

The pain, coupled with her heightened sensitivity to it, was like a screaming baby. Highly distressing, and incredibly difficult to simply ignore.

She closed her eyes, forcing herself to be still, concentrating on her breathing, which had become rather shaky and laboured.

That didn’t work either.

Frustrated, no longer able to care what Raboniel thought, she got to her feet, stretching. She rolled her angry shoulder, and it popped with a spasm of pain that made her gasp in spite of herself.

“Navani,” Raboniel said from behind her, “Is something wrong?”

Gritting her teeth, Navani forced herself to turn, bowing her head respectfully to the Fused.

“I apologise if my lack of focus is displeasing to you, Ancient One,” she said.

Raboniel studied her, still humming to that indecipherable rhythm. Navani did notice, distantly, that it didn’t sound like derision, as she would have expected.

“I did not ask out of displeasure or irritation, Navani,” Raboniel said, “But out of concern.”

Navani exhaled slowly, gripping the back of the desk chair in a white-knuckled grip, as though this would help somehow.

“I am in pain, Ancient One,” she said, too sore, and too tired, and too storming frustrated to be delicate about it.

Raboniel blinked and sat up straighter. Her rhythm became faster, with sharper, higher pitched beats, “Have you been injured?” she asked, sharply, “Shall I send for a healer to attend you?”

Navani smiled wanly. Would that it were so easy.

“Thank you, Ancient One, but no, there is nothing any healer can do for me. My own have already tried.”

Renarin had insisted, bless him. Navani had suspected, correctly, that he would be unable to help her, but he had said he would not feel right if he didn't at least make an effort with his Stormlight.

“This is an existing condition,” she explained, “It is not something that can be cured.”

Raboniel cocked her head to the side, considering, “I have heard of a condition among humans that causes degradation and inflammation of joint tissues that comes with wear and age. You do not seem old enough for this, however.”

Navani nodded, too fatigued and hazy to remark as much as she should have on the fact that Raboniel knew of arthritis, of all things.

“The surgeons suggested this to me when my symptoms presented around ten years ago,” she explained, “They thought I might have an early on-set of the condition, though their usual treatments did not seem to help me,” she said, grimly. “Another suggested that it may be a lesser known neurological condition that causes pain but does not cause observable physical damage. Without any way to see the joints, they could not be certain.”

Raboniel nodded, apparently considering, then, surprisingly, she got to her feet and walked over to join Navani.

“Would you object to my examining you?” she asked, the music of her words surprisingly gentle, as if intended to put her at ease. It made it clear this was a true request, not a veiled command.

Startled, Navani shrugged and nodded. What was the harm? Perhaps the Fused thought that she was lying. She had experienced that before. If someone could not see an injury, they assumed it was not present.

Raboniel, already having deduced that the shoulder was a problem area, motioned for Navani to remove her havah there. She did so, easing it down off her shoulder, bearing the skin for the other scholar.

She wasn’t sure what the Fused wished to examine. There was nothing to see. No visible sign of injury, no swelling, or redness.

Raboniel examined the area carefully, giving her a thorough, and apparently practiced, visual inspection. Then she said, “May I touch you? I do not intend to hurt you, and I shall stop if you request it. But I have something I wish to attempt.”

Baffled but intrigued, Navani nodded, “You may proceed,” she said.

Raboniel laid a hand on Navani’s shoulder. Her skin was callused, like Dalinar’s, but was warm, which she had not expected, for some reason.

Navani watched, fascinated, as Raboniel closed her eyes and hummed a strange, pulsing rhythm that steadily passed out of Navani’s hearing range, and was unlike anything she’d experienced before.

Even as she became unable to hear it, however, she felt it vibrating through her shoulder.

She gasped in surprise, and Raboniel faltered for a moment, blinking her eyes open, and making to remove her hand. Instinctively, Navani placed her own over it, keeping it in place.

“I am well,” she breathed, “Please, don’t stop.”

Raboniel nodde and closed her eyes again, continuing. She did this for several minutes, moving her hand to different places several times.

Finally, she stopped and hummed a different rhythm that Navani could hear, one that sounded satisfied, “Your second surgeon’s hypothesis was correct,” she announced, “I cannot sense any damage to the joint itself.”

“Sense?”Navani repeated, feeling vaguely overwhelmed. She thought she knew what Raboniel meant, but surely…

“If I touch you, and push a certain rhythm into your skin, changes in how I in turn feel that rhythm allow me to build a vague picture of things beneath the surface of your skin.

“In doing that, I cannot detect any obvious holes or degradation to the muscle or joint. Though, I will admit, this process is uncertain.”

“Storms,” Navani said, reeling from the implications of this. “It’s like cremlings that live in tunnels in the rocks,” she whispered, hand to her head, “They emit sounds and use how they bounce back to see without eyes. Scholars have recently made a study of it, but they considered it an exercise in natural science, only. No-one imagined it might have implications or other uses for us.”

Raboniel nodded, humming in the way she did whenever Navani grasped a theory she was explaining, and expanded upon it. A pleased, excited rhythm.

“It is inexact,” Raboniel said, “And imperfect. Though it is a promising avenue for exploration nonetheless, no for now it has had little testing.”

“It’s incredible,” Navani breathed, “Truly, Raboniel.”

For once, Raboniel did not seem to mind that Navani had forgotten her title. Indeed, she actually smiled.

Then the expression faded a little.

When she spoke, Navani expected her rhythm to be that satisfied one again, but it was softer, more wistful, with an almost mournful cast to it.

“Sometimes,” she said quietly, “Sometimes I wonder what good I might have brought to this world in all my long years, had I not been made to fight this endless war. How many might I have saved had I used my abilities to heal, rather than harm? What a wonderful, impossible dream that is.”

Navani reached out, daringly, and took her hand, the one that had been on her shoulder, and said, quietly but firmly, “It does not have to be impossible. It is not too late for that, Raboniel. You could still save lives, if that is what you wished.”

A darkness suffused her rhythm as she replied, “I shall, Navani. I intend to end this war, and with it save thousands from the horrors I have been subjected to throughout so many Returns. But I will not achieve that through gentle words and medical innovation.

“This war persists as each side is assured continuation. The Fused will return again and again, with mangled minds and hollowed souls echoing with the songs of hatred and pain. The Radiants will die, but their spren will bond others to fight us.

“And we will fight. And they will fight. And on and on it shall go, as it has for thousands of years.

“The only way for me to end it is to change the stakes. Make them real. Make them bloodier. Make death real, for both sides.”

Navani felt a chill run through her at that, but forced her voice to remain steady as she said, “My husband, Dalinar, believed that, too. He thought the only way to win a war was to deal so much death to his enemy that they could never recover.”

She met the Fused eyes and squeezed her hand, saying fiercely, “He was wrong. He was a monster,” Navani pressed on, determined, “He became a better man. He changed. You can change, as well, it is not too late.”

Raboniel studied her for a long time, before she smiled wryly and said, “I have always been fond of this aspect of humans. You have such hope in the potentials of the future. You believe that things will change, that things will become better. You think that if something can happen, then it shall.”

A distant look entered her eyes, and something dark reflected within them, something deep, and full of pain.

“We see it differently. The future can be different from how the past has written its script. But it must be forced, it must be pushed, it must be given some reason to change. It will not do so on a whim.”

She looked down at Navani, her eyes deep, her rhythm pulsing strongly against her.

“You seek to be that force for me, Navani Kholin, the will that shifts me from what thousands of years of history proclaim I shall be, to the mythical ideal of what I might become that lives in your mind. I commend you for that. It takes bravery, and true grit, to achieve. But it cannot be.”

“Why?” Navani said, a hint of desperation in her voice, “Why must we continue this cycle of death, and only escalate it? Why can it not change? Why can you not change?”

“Humans are fleeting,” Raboniel murmured, “This refreshes you, revitalises you, brings new ideas and new eyes to the same old song. Your husband, he was a monster for, what? Two decades? Crem that has only just fallen may still be molded, still be altered.

"I have been a monster for thousands of years, Navani.

"When crem is left for centuries it becomes stone. When it is left for millenia, it becomes part of the fabric of this world.

"I am as eternal and immovable as the stones and storms of Roshar, Navani. They cannot stop blowing, their fires will not stop flaming and I? I will not stop, either.”

Navani trembled, the weight, and power, and depth of this woman’s experiences shaking her very being.

“Now,” Raboniel said, her rhythm becoming stronger, brisker, once again. “Is there anything I might do that will alleviate your pain so you may continue your research with me?”

Navani paused, momentarily thrown by the sudden change in the conversation’s tone. Then she pulled herself back to level, business-like ground as well.

“There are certain plants and medications that can dull the pain, Ancient One,” she said with a grimace.

Raboniel cocked her head, “Then why do you make that face, Navani?”

“They are known to dull the mind as well as the senses,” she said, “Or they have other, even less desirable side-effects.”

Raboniel hummed, and this time she did sound displeased. “Is there nothing else?” she asked, “How did you deal with it before we arrived here?”

Navani hesitated. Storms, what she wouldn’t give for her painrial back. But no. She couldn’t tell Raboniel of that. Painrials were too essential to the traps and plans she had simmering in the back of her mind. It would not do to reveal one so explicitly.

Instead she said carefully, “Heat has proved an effective therapy for me in the past, Ancient One.”

“Heat?” Raboniel said, humming to a thoughtful rhythm again. “Would you object to my touching you again, Navani?” she asked softly.

She should have. After what this woman had just said, after what she had implied about what she had done, what she was capable of, she should have fled to the opposite end of the room and placed herself as far from her as possible.

Yet she nodded, cautiously.

Raboniel approached again, flexing her hand, and Navani gasped as flame engulfed her palm. A moment later they faded, but her palms retained a soft glow, like coals in a dying fire.

She met Navani’s eyes, questioning, and Navani tentatively nodded.

The other woman put her hands on Navani’s aching shoulder and heat from her palms, giving her the feeling of sinking into a hot bath after a full day’s hard labour.

She shivered, relief washing through her, as her muscles instinctively relaxed, no longer taut with pain, and she trembled.

She would have fallen, but Raboniel, anticipating this, moved a hand to support her, and Navani gripped her forearm, steadying herself as she let out a long, slow breath, and fought not to moan with how good it this felt.

“It is helping?” Raboniel asked softly, rhythm curious.

Navani nodded wordlessly, eyes still closed, drinking in the relief at the contact. For the moment, she forgot that the source of the heat was not one of her fabrials, but an ancient, god-empowered, immortal, voidbinding Fused and simply enjoyed it. It had been so long since she’d had any kind of relief for her pain.

After a moment, Raboniel shifted her hands from Navani’s shoulders, down to her hips and lower back, letting them rest and soothe the aches there as well.

This time Navani did let a hoarse moan escape her. Stormfather but she had been suffering with this all day. Raboniel hummed her reply.

“I am glad that this brings you some relief from your pains,” she said quietly.

“I thought you could only progress towards destruction, not relief, or calm,” Navani said, too boldly.

“Careful, Navani,” Raboniel hummed, though her rhythm was one of warning, not fury.

Raboniel withdrew not long after that, but left Navani feeling refreshed and energised as if she’d just drunk in a goblet full of Stormlight.

They returned to their work, and several times more over the hours they studied together, Raboniel leaned over and pressed warmed palms against her to soothe away her aches.

Navani tried not to think about what it meant when Raboniel’s hands lingered longer than they needed to. Or how she leaned into the touches perhaps more than she should have. Or how more than the heat from her palms flared inside Navani when skin met skin.

Storms.

Somehow, this may have caused more problems than it had solved…

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone wondering: I wrote Navani as having fibromyalgia, because that's what I have and am therefore the most familiar with. 
> 
> I love this ship. Brandon came for me. Like personally. He looked at me and went 'Taryn, this is gonna fuck u up to ur core' and then he wrote Navani and Raboniel throughout RoW. So here we are. Expect more content in the near future. Just as often as I remember I have stuff to post...
> 
> Comments are Delightful. I thank everyone who commented on the Jasnah/Wit piece. I am fuelled and inspired. 
> 
> If there's anything in particular y'all would like to see for these two hit me up btw.


End file.
